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Working with files on an external USB Hard-Drive

Posted by on Jun 1, 2013 in Hardware

I am the proud owner of an Apple Thunderbolt Display (2560×1440). It has an outstanding image quality, comes with built-in microphone, speakers, and autofocus FaceTime HD camera.
- Btw, the camera does a rather poor job with the white balance and has a red tint, but becomes useable with a tool like iGlasses 3 -

apple-11q3-thunderboltdisplay-rear-sm On the back, it has three USB -, one Firewire -, one Thunderbolt, and one Ethernet port. There is also this single bigger cable to the Laptop, combining Thunderbolt and power and keeping the desk neatly organized.

For a year or so, I have an external USB Harddrive (Western Digital 2 TerraBytes) connected to one of the display’s USB ports. I’m mainly using it for Time-Machine backups and storing application disk images etc. Since all cables disappear behind the display and not cluttering my desk, I never thought about connecting the harddrive straight to one of the Laptop’s USB ports directly. However, as it turns out, my nice and neat setup comes with quite a penalty.

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Streaming Your Webcam w/ Raspberry Pi

Posted by on Sep 8, 2012 in Embedded

[Last updated on Feb. 2. 2013 for (2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian) Kernel Version 3.2.27+]

Three years ago, we bought two small Webcams and since we wanted to used them on Linux and OS X, we went with the UVC and Mac compatible Creative LIVE! CAM Video IM Ultra. This Webcam (Model VF0415) has a high-resolution sensor that lets you take 5.0-megapixel pictures and record videos at up to 1.3-megapixel, supported resolutions include 640×480, 1290×720, and 1280×960. If you like, you can go back and read what I was thinking about the IM Ultra back in 2009. Today, it’s not much used anymore, but may just be the right accessory for an Raspberry Pi.

With the USB Camera attached to the Raspi, lsusb returns something like this:

lsusb

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 7392:7811 Edimax Technology Co., Ltd EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS]
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 041e:4071 Creative Technology, Ltd

Using the current Raspbian “wheezy” distribution (Kernel 3.2.27+), one can find the following related packages, ready for deployment:

  • luvcview, a camera viewer for UVC based webcams, which includes an mjpeg decoder and is able to save the video stream as an AVI file.
  • uvccapture, which can capture an image (JPEG) from a USB webcam at a specified interval

While these might be great tools, mpeg-streamer looks like a more complete, one-stop-shop kind-of solution.

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Droid vs Incredible vs Droid X

Posted by on Aug 4, 2010 in Hardware

We are really lucky, to experience another technological revolution. After the Personal Computer and the Internet, the Smart-Phone as a front-end for Cloud-Computing seems to be the next radical alteration, once again saving the tech industry, not just in the Valley, but in every other related  tech center around the country.

It always needs at least two players to have a game and Android and the iPhone seem to be those players this time around. Even when considering Nokia’s, BlackBerry’s, and Windows Mobile combined huge install base, it still looks very much like “game over” for them. In a fast paced technology it’s all about momentum and growth-rate; market share is gained and lost during periods of transition and change.

Droid vs Incredible vs Droid X

I had three great Android Phones available, all running Android 2.1 Update-1, and all running on Verizon’s network, and thought it would be fun to run a couple casual benchmarks. So here we go, we took a closer look at the original Motorola Droid, the HTC Incredible, and Motorola’s Droid X.

I know, I know, this isn’t a fair fight, the Droid was last year’s coolest Android device launched in late Fall 2009, while the Incredible and the Droid X are brand new phones .. well, I guess this just proofs that the half-life of an Android Phone Generation is currently about 8 months.

Please, don’t take this comparison too seriously, it wasn’t performed scientifically, not even close. Generally @tompaulus and I ran the tests 3 to 5 times and picked the median. We took standard benchmark related applications from the Android Marketplace and made sure that the phones were not running too much other stuff in the background while performing our tests.

Meet the contestants:

1. MOTOROLA SHOLES – DROID

Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l)
System RAM: 225 MB

2. HTC INC – ADR6300

Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
System RAM: 404 MB

3. MOTOROLA SHADOW – DROID X

Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
System RAM: 476 MB

Droid X WIFI Download Speed

Internet Download Speed

Here we were looking at the Wifi upload and download speed, measured with the SpeedTest.Net application. However, we are just showing the download speed. Upload speed was capped by the ISP at about 1000 kbps, which all three devices were easily able to achieve.

WIFI Download Speed [kbps]

  1. Droid: 5,707
  2. Incredible: 13,019
  3. Droid X: 14,425

Quadrant Standard

Quadrant is a CPU, I/O and 3D graphics benchmark application, freely available in the Marketplace. It computes a single value over a large number of tests:

  1. Droid: 373
  2. Incredible: 569
  3. Droid X: 1281

3D Benchmark

An3DBench is a 3d benchmark based on the Android version of the jPCT 3d engine. It runs seven tests from fill rate to complex scenes.

Motorola Droid

  1. Fillrate: ST/MT: 8.13/7.61 MP/sec.
  2. High object count: 14.85 fps
  3. Multiple lights: 41.02 fps
  4. High polygon count: 15.72 fps
  5. Keyframe animation: 44.70 fps
  6. Game level: 27.15 fps
  7. Total Score: 3945

HTC Incredible

  1. Fillrate: ST/MT: 9.56/9.57 MP/sec.
  2. High object count: 15.23 fps
  3. Multiple lights: 44.60 fps
  4. High polygon count: 22.19 fps
  5. Keyframe animation: 57.95 fps
  6. Game level: 24.50 fps
  7. Total Score: 4512

Motorola Droid X

  1. Fillrate: ST/MT: 11.04/11.08 MP/sec.
  2. High object count: 27.62 fps
  3. Multiple lights: 60.59 fps
  4. High polygon count: 25.29 fps
  5. Keyframe animation: 60.67 fps
  6. Game level: 46.17 fps
  7. Total Score: 6045

The Camera

The original Droid features a 5 MP camera, while the two new models both come with 8 MP cameras built-in. Only the two Droids have dedicated hardware shutter buttons, which makes taking steady shots quite a bit easier. We took pictures at the best possible resolution and transferred them without editing.

We didn’t like the Droid’s camera too much when it came out and it seems that the Droid X’s camera has it’s issues as well. However, nothing that cannot be fixed with software (Hey Moto, are you listening?) Here are the blown-up samples :

Motorola Droid


HTC Incredible


Motorola Droid X


The incredible Droid X

While the HTC Incredible is heavily branded with the HTC Sense UI, the original Droid came as a Google Experience phone, meaning Motorola didn’t put the MotoBlur overlay on. The Droid X is highly customizable, i.e. you can get as much or as little of MotoBlur as you like. Some of the Widgets look and also work very nicely and even MotoBlur haters may (only very secretly of course) use a little blur if nobody looks.

The Incredible’s screen seems to be a bit glossier and also a bit sharper, which is not really a big surprise since the Incredible and the Droid X both have about the same screen resolution but the Droid X has to spread the pixels over a larger area.

What remains to be said is that the Droid X really is incredible. I don’t like the row of  four hardware buttons too much and the phone might really be too big for some and certainly doesn’t look and feel as elegant, sophisticated as the HTC Incredible but it certainly is fast and at the same time very light, .. dashing.

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Sh!t We Like – The Creative Live! Cam Vid. IM Ultra

Posted by on Jul 12, 2009 in Hardware

Originally I was just looking for a decent Webcam for a Linux project, but since almost all computers in my house run OS X, I thought it would be nice to find one that could be use on a MacMini as well. Fortunately, there is a growing list of UVC compatible devices available, some of which have been tested to work on a Mac out-of-the-box, i.e. without the need to install additional drivers.
Considering Linux and Mac compatibility, pixel/resolution, as well as price, we picked the Creative LIVE! CAM Video IM Ultra, which when compared to a built-in iSight cameras seems to create higher quality videos.

Video Recording

While we used the standard 640×480 video format for the recording below, the VF415 Live! Cam Vid. IM Ultra’s native format is Y’CbCr 4:2:2 -yuvy, 1280×960 with Millions of Colors.

Creative LIVE! CAM Video IM Ultra

  • Format: H.264 640×480 Millions of Colors, AAC, Mono, 44.100 KHz
  • FPS: 30 frames per second
  • Data Rate: 1500.24 kbits/s
MacBook built-in iSight Camera

  • Format: H.264 640×480 Millions of Colors, AAC, Mono, 44.100 KHz
  • FPS: 30 frames per second
  • Data Rate: 711.34 kbits/s

Audio Recording

It was a positive surprise, finding out that there is a microphone hidden in the camera’s focus ring. However, the microphone is pretty much useless, at least when used under Mac OS X. We used WireTap Studio to create a fair comparison recording, using the MacBook’s built-in microphone, the Live Cam Ultra’s built-in mic., as well as an external Logitech USB Microphone.

Creative LIVE! CAM Video IM Ultra built-in Microphone:

Creative LIVE! CAM Video IM Ultra built-in Microphone:

Logitech AK5370 external USB Microphone:

Overall, we really like the IM Ultra, the image quality is crisp and it attaches easily to a laptop’s lids as well as a much thicker LCD monitors. However, the audio quality really sucks (at least when used on a Mac and you better have another mic on hand). Moreover, expectedly, the camera doesn’t work on a low power USB port.

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